Summary

While we’re awaiting the results and decklists from Pro Tour Aether Revolt, let’s check out a sweet Legacy deck that is affordable (or at least more affordable than most of Legacy) and powerful.

Somewhere between Modern Dredgevine from days past and Legacy Jund lies this unique deck, Zombie Bombardment. Zombardment (apparently 2 syllables is a lot) operates on a very unique axis that attacks certain parts of the Legacy format very well. Cards like Bloodghast, Gravecrawler, and Vengevine all offer recursive threats that get a little silly when paired with Goblin Bombardment and Carrion Feeder. The rest of the deck is a combination of removal spells and discard spells which aim to disrupt the opponent, and graveyard facilitators that give you access to more copies of the deck’s recursive threats by putting them in the graveyard. This deck saw a play at the highest level in the hands of Sam Black who popularized the deck, and it’s always been on the fringes of the format since then.

This deck’s power is really shown against fair decks that want to use removal spells to gain an edge. It effectively strands their removal spells, and unless they can get a significant clock on board, they die to Vengevine and co.. This deck has also proven itself to be very good against decks that play small creatures, as Goblin Bombardment can frequently lock players out of the game when paired with Gravecrawler. Previously, this deck played some number of Lingering Souls to add to the general theme of the deck, but it turned out to be not necessary, so it was cut. Unfortunately, this means the creature matchups get slightly worse, but are still favorable. Against fast combo decks, however, this deck can struggle. It doesn’t put on as much pressure as is needed, and the discard spells can only stall so much. Vengevine is the best beatdown card in the matchup, but you have to get a little lucky to get more than one in play in time for them to be effective.

This deck is hard to play, and it frequently has to min/max its resources perfectly to win matchups, so don’t play this deck if you don’t want to learn it inside and out. That being said, it’s really fun to play and watch, so I recommend you give it a shot if you’re looking for something new in the format. Here are the changes I would make going forward: